Many retailers are attempting to predict what products customers will like and recommend these products for the customers. Such recommendations can increase sales, and in some cases profits, for retailers. Many of these systems rely on data about customers, such as purchase history and browsing history. While a customer's purchase history and browsing history are useful in predicting what products the customer may like, using only these metrics can result in a large number of products being recommended to the customer or products being recommended to the customer that the customer does not like or already owns. For example, if a customer recently purchased a blue shirt and the system recommends every blue shirt that a retailer carries to the customer, this likely large number of blue shirt recommendations will not be helpful to the customer and may even decrease the likelihood of a sale. As an example of providing irrelevant recommendations, if the customer recently purchased a grill and the system recommends additional grills, the recommendations may not be helpful or wanted, since it is unlikely that the customer will purchase a second grill in such a short time period. Consequently, a need exists for product recommendation systems, methods, and apparatuses that better recommend products to customers.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.